by Kris Kennedy
The rainbow became a single beam of white light again.
“What did you do?” she said at once. “What happened?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He pulled the paper back further, and the rainbow slowly reappeared, the colors now blurring up the page in the opposite order.
Her eyes widened, and she looked up to smile at him in astonishment, then returned to watching the show he’d given her. “It almost makes one think the colors are…within the light.”
His gaze flew to hers. “Aye,” he said, a low hum of agreement.
“But that cannot be,” she said, although not in a rejecting way. In a…hopeful way.
“Anything can be, Katy.” He ran his hand through the beams of light, and they fluttered in bands of color across his hard fingers. “Go on, touch it,” he urged softly.
She bent and put her face into the rainbow streams of light.
Her nose became streaked with red and orange and yellow. She moved slightly, and it turned violet, blue, the slightest sliver of green. Her eyes came up to his, and the light shafts sprayed across her face, across her eye in red and gold, like a pathway leading in.
He lowered the second prism and came to her, folded her fingers around the stone and brought her fisted hand to his lips. He kissed her knuckles. Just skin and bone, it was as if he’d broken her open.
“Why are you giving me this?”
“Because it makes me think of you.”
“Aodh,” she whispered. “Please, stop.”
“No,” he murmured. He knew precisely what he was denying her; as if to prove it, he turned her hand over and kissed her inner wrist.
She shivered. “Why are you trying to win me, Aodh? Why does it matter so much?”
His hand slid to her waist. “My intent is not to win you.”
She stared up into eyes so blue it almost hurt to look into them. Blue like the sea, blue like blood under the skin. “Then what?”
“You are a fire that was almost extinguished, Katarina. And I need your flame.”
“Oh, Aodh, no.”
He tugged on their entwined fingers, guiding her forward as he backed up, leading her to the bed.
“This thing you want of me, Aodh, it almost ruined me. It destroyed my parents. I do not care if you need my fire; I do not need it,” she said, hoping he would save her from herself, because she was swiftly losing the fight.
He showed no mercy, just kept backing up, leading her forward like a wild creature, coaxing her to the secret truth of them: passion bound them in a fated way.
“I have spent my entire life trying to suppress that which you desire.”
“I know,” he said, and dropped onto the bed. As he went down, he pulled her with him. “I cannot let you do that.”
She lowered herself to straddle him, her other hand still closed around the prism.
He began unlacing the crisscrossing ribbons on the sides of her tunic. He swept the gown up over her head, so she was clad only in her chemise.
“This is wrong,” she whispered.
“I do not care for such things. I care only if it pleases you.” He tipped forward and touched his tongue to her breast, still covered by the soft linen. Her nipples peaked to gemstone hardness. His gaze swept up.
“Tell me, Katy, does that please you?”
A ragged cry broke from her lips.
He moved his mouth to her other breast, graced it with another hard stroke of his tongue through the thin linen shift. She curled her fingers into his hair.
“We are doomed if we do this thing.”
“Surrender to it.”
“Were I to do that, everything I am, everything I have, would be lost.”
“Maybe that is the very thing you need.” He lifted the chemise.
“Then I would have nothing.”
“You would have me.”
She gave a broken sob. “Don’t you see, you will destroy me?”
His hands stilled. “I vow it, I will not. Your heart knows.”
“What does my heart know?”
“Look where it has brought you. To me. Again.”
He was right. She was wrecked. “You will ruin me.”
“Get up, then, Katy. Get up and walk away.” His body was taut with restraint. “I’ll not stop you.”
Her thighs trembled from holding herself up above him. “I am locked in.”
“The door is not locked.”
“The castle is.”
“I’ll have you on a ship, to anywhere you wish. Just walk away.”
“You would…let me leave?”
“You must leave, Katy. You are mine, or you are gone. There is no other way.” His gaze was like a cord, a tether. She felt bonded to him by a single, shivering strand of sight.
“I do not want to leave,” she whispered.
“Good. Then let us begin.”
Begin. How like him, to word it so. Everything about him felt like the edge of the cliff. Irrevocable, life-changing.
He cupped her face and claimed her with a kiss.
It was an openmouthed, unforgiving, conquest of a kiss, his hands holding her face, pulling her down to him. She returned it with full ardor, their tongues tangling. They paused only when he leaned her back with a muttered instruction, so he could sweep the chemise up over her head and fling it away. Then she was naked before him.
He made a dark sound of approval. Cool air washed over her breasts and no matter that she’d been bared to him once before, the urge to hide was the strongest thing in her. It came to the fore, and she began to cover herself.
“No, Katy. I want to see you.”
He took her wrists and gently lifted them, parting her arms, holding them up in the air, stretched out wide, so he could stare at her body.
The breath burst from her. She closed her eyes, unable to withstand the force of desire she saw in him. For she knew it was in her too.
“I’m going to take you now.” Threat, promise, warning, it was all those things, and her body felt as if he’d strung her up on bolts of lightning. “Hard and deep.” Her wrists hung in his hands as he leaned forward and flicked his tongue across her breast. “I’m not going to stop.” He grazed her with his teeth, and her head dropped forward. “Until you’re laid out, tossing your head and crying my name.” His gaze swept up. “And then I'm going to take you harder.”
Breath, blood, fire: in the end, she was a simple thing. Aodh had reduced her to her most elemental forms.
She lifted her head slowly, inch by inch, as if dragging it through honey. “I cannot marry you, Aodh.”
“To be honest, Katy, I’m not thinking of marriage just now.”
The words poked a hole through the mounting tension, and she laughed. And trembled, now scared beyond measure, far more than when the castle had been taken. A castle was stone and wood; it was meant to be captured. But Aodh had conquered her.
She’d thought herself insurmountable. A cold mountaintop.
Oh, but he’d summited her with hot kisses and cold insights. It was enough that he saw her, truly saw her. Even unto what had happened with the swords. Because she had so clearly wanted to fight, and he had seen that, and honored it—given her her fight—when no one else would.
He’d given her a map of the world.
He’d given her a prism of light.
Aodh even knew enough to lock her away, for it was her freedom she prized above all else. And he’d unleashed passions she’d never known were inside her.
He knew precisely where to aim, saw every chink in her armor.
Oh, what a formidable enemy he was, but he would be an even more dangerous ally. Lover.
“Just give me a chance,” he rasped.
“I will give you more than that,” she whispered, surrendering to it. To him.
At once, he slid his hand between their bodies, and began to unlace his breeches. Her hands followed after, greedy to feel the hard thrust of him. If she was going to do this thing, she was going to do it wi
th all her heart. All her body. Give everything she could short of treason, and take everything Aodh would allow.
With a muted curse he put his hands on hers, stopping her. He slid off the bed and stood, swiftly freeing himself of garments: kicked off his boots, tore off hose, tunic, breeches in swift sweeps, until he stood naked before her.
She felt blown back by the force of his hard, male beauty.
The entire left side of him was marked, down past his waist, just as she’d wondered. Hoped.
The inked lines roped from the back of his skull to the column of his neck, over his powerful shoulder and down his back and chest. They swirled like spells down his flat, ribbed stomach, over his hips, down the hard muscles of his thigh, through the hair of his shin and calf, all the way to his toe.
And rising up from the center of his magnificent, ensorcelled body, jutting out from the dark thatch of hair between his thighs, was a bold, thick erection, curving back almost to his belly.
Unthinking, knowing only that she needed to touch him, she began to drop to her knees, reaching for him.
He swept her back to her feet. “That is not a good idea just now, Katy.” His voice was a taut scrape.
He pulled her to the bed, laid her down on it, and knelt between her thighs, his face taut and rigid. “I’ll go slow,” he said, at odds with the rampant energy she knew was roiling through him.
“Just don’t stop.”
He propped himself on a palm, leaned to the side, and reached between their bodies. His painted hand grasped his erection. She was breathless at the erotic sight, wanted nothing but to watch his hand curl around himself, but there was no time, for he settled between her legs. The hard, silken head of him bumped into her folds, then, with a little shove, he breached her, pushed up inside the barest inch.
She froze, her lips rounded around a hard, silent gasp.
He pulled his hips back and brought them forward and sank in further. Her head flung back, jerked by whipcord lashes of arousal. His eyes flew to hers.
“Aye?” Ragged, whispered, it was barely a word.
“Oh, aye.”
His chest moved in rapid breaths; he was breathing as fast as she. Which meant his head must be spinning as hard as hers, his heart must be thudding with the same frenzied beat.
Never looking away, he repositioned himself, propped up on his palms and stretched out above her. Then he rocked his hips forward. It was an unstoppable thrust, slow mayhap, but very hard, very deep. Very much intending to take her fully.
Her body spread for him, sensitive inner flesh trembling as he stroked into it.
He pulled out and sank in again, a slow, carnal possession. Beautifully slow, painfully slow. The muscles in his arms were tautly defined as he held himself up and rocked again. A shudder took his body. His head tipped back, his eyes shut, the muscles in his neck stretched taut as he plunged into her yet again, harder this time, going in deeper.
It was a viciously gentle breach of her defenses.
Katarina had been prepared for a crushing sensual assault, expected him to storm her gates with fire, after such a long siege. Aodh was vigor and endless movement, a roiling storm cloud; she’d known that to be taken by him, meant to be taken entirely.
But this slow subjugation, this gentle rout of her body, was like being set on fire with a long fuse. It was cruel, vicious, unkind. Perfect.
As if she were the land and he her sky, he stretched out over her, and she laid herself out for him more with each thrust, until her arms curled helplessly above her head. Her hips rose to meet each controlled penetration, her head tipped up to receive every kiss he saw fit to plant on her mouth. Inside her, a hot bank of pressure built. She felt like a storm about to break.
His eyes were so dark, so dilated with desire, she could disappear into them, as if into night, and never be seen again. In this moment, she wanted just that, to disappear from the world, and never be seen by anyone but Aodh.
“Ready, lass?”
Bands of excitement coiled around her. She nodded.
He shoved his hips forward in a deep, fierce thrust, shocking her with the suddenness, and the pleasure to be had from the hard, fierce taking of it. She wanted to be taken by this man, hard and long, until she wept from it.
Then he stopped, as if he hadn’t meant to do it so forcefully.
But she had loved the force of him.
“Please, Aodh.” She curled her hands around his hips.
“You like that?”
“Oh yes.” She pulled on him, urging him on.
He set a rhythm then, matching himself to the thrust of her hips, the toss of her head, how high her back arched to him.
“Aye, Katy, take more of me,” he commanded, shoving her knee wide to the side.
The powerful arms on either side of her head shook as she lifted her hips, opening for him. He dropped to his elbows, laid his mouth on her neck, and took her hard. His hips rolled between her thighs in fierce, hard thrusts. Their bodies grew sweaty, slicked together, then slid apart. He pushed her legs apart farther until she was splayed out for him, sprawled, her head tossing. She could do nothing but whatever Aodh bid.
His mouth plowed her open, tasted her, then left her gasping when he tore away and moved to her ear, then her neck, then her breasts. Everything he touched felt as though it sparkled. She held her breasts up for his suckling, tangled her fingers in his hair to move his head where she wanted to feel his caress next. She nipped his neck, his shoulders, let him do things she had never dreamed of, and reveled in it. He was a wave she was riding, powerful and unstoppable.
It was untended and untamed.
It was magnificent.
She closed her eyes to better focus on the sensations running rampant through her body, the scalding pleasure brought by Aodh’s possession of her. Her hips began to thrust up more frantically, her head to toss more unevenly. Her gasps kept breaking off mid-cry, as each new twist of pleasure coiled through her.
Hard and fast now, their union ascended. Pleasure built in dizzying sweeps. She was cold and desperately hot. He slid his hand down under her body, cupped her bottom and lifted, holding her up and shifting their angle. A bolt of pleasure snaked through her.
He surged into her again, then again, and again, until the pleasure was intolerable, so intense it scorched. Her back arched, her breath arrested, poised at the edge of a precipice.
He bent to her ear. “You see, there is nothing we cannot do, Katy, you and I. Whatever you want, we will be.”
“Oh.”
“You are mine.”
Her head whipped back, her body jerked from within, then she exploded. “Yours.”
The climax picked her up and tossed her. Helpless in the smashing, churning pleasure, she could do nothing but fling her head, rock her body, and cry Aodh’s name, just as he’d said. He roared his completion then too, and the flood of male heat that surged through her coaxed her body to summit on another wave of pleasure.
They continued to move against each other until the last vestiges of climax were spent. Then he dragged himself off her and drew her to lay beside him.
She sprawled, stunned, her hips still rocking forward, as if a dream of arousal clung to her. He dragged her knee up onto his stomach to let her move against him, curled his hand under the sweaty length of her hair, and lifted it up, so cool air could brush over it.
She whispered her thanks, planted a messy kiss on his jaw, and her head fell back to the bed. Almost before it hit the sheets, they were asleep, sweaty limbs entwined, carnal lusts sated, for the moment, their minds protected from what this all meant. But of course it meant something.
It meant she was his.
Rardove was, in every way now, in the hands of a rebel.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
SHE WAS AWAKENED by the feel of his hand lightly stroking up her naked back, under the covers. The furs were warm, the fire was burning—he must have made it up, because it crackled and popped with fresh fuel. The furs wer
e silky across her body.
His hand slid up between her shoulder blades, and, still half in sleep, she stretched into his touch and pushed her leg out, long under the covers.
Aodh’s hand, warm and hard, tugged her knee up over his stomach. She curled into him like a cat.
Then he dragged her entirely onto his body, pushed his knee between hers, parting them, and with a swift, confident lift of his hips, thrust up inside her with a slippery, pressured push.
“Oh,” she breathed, still half in sleep.
“G’morning,” he whispered by her ear.
“Is it morning?” She tried to straighten.
“’Tis after midnight.”
“Morning,” she agreed dazedly, pushing up on her elbows. She shoved the hair back from her forehead and looked into the eyes so close to hers. The sharp angles of his warrior’s face, hardened by the world, were softened now, partly by a morning covering of facial hair on his cheeks, but mostly by the heated passion in his eye.
“I dreamed of you,” she whispered.
“And I, you,” he said quietly, but the resonate rumble sounded loud in the firelit room. He lifted his hips, pushed in a little deeper.
“Is this a dream?” she whispered.
“Aye.”
She bent her head and touched her lips to his. “It feels very real.”
“Does it feel very good?”
She tipped her head to the side. “I suppose it will do.”
He brushed the sweaty hair back from her cheeks and temples. “What of this?” Another lift of his hips, sinking him in deeper. Bright ripples snaked through her body.
“I think I like that.”
“Then rise up, and let me take you.”
Addled by pleasure, by this sudden erotic awakening, she pushed to sit up on him. He curled his hands around her hips and as she shifted, he slipped in deeper.
His hands brought her hips forward in a hard pull. “Take more of me,” he ordered roughly, and his thighs flexed as he lifted his hips and buried himself inside her.